The film will carry you deep inside Mr. Gould’s musical mind: an awesome place to be, and not always a comfortable one.

"I detest audiences. Not in their individual segments but en masse, I detest audiences. I think they are a force of evil."

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DANTE: You hate people.
RANDAL: But I love gatherings. Isn't it ironic?

Back to the new Gould film:

The most astonishing moment comes when Mr. Gould fluently wends his way through the climactic section of the unfinished final fugue from Bach’s “Art of Fugue,” spouting thematic analysis and quoting Albert Schweitzer as he goes.

Now reread the beginning of Gödel, Escher, Bach.

To give an idea of how extraordinary a six-part fugue is, in the entire Well-Tempered Clavier by Bach, containing forty-eight Preludes and Fugues, only two have as many as five parts, and nowhere is there a six-part fugue! One could probably liken the task of improvising a six-part fugue to the playing of sixty simultaneous games of chess, and winning them all. To improvise an eight-part fugue is really beyond human capability.

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The six-part fugue [in the Musical Offering] is one of Bach's most complex creations, and its theme is, of course, the Royal Theme. ... To write a decent fugue of even two voices based on it would not be easy for the average musician!

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All in all, the Musical Offering represents one of Bach's supreme accomplishments in counterpoint. It is itself one large intellectual fugue, in which many ideas and forms have been woven together, and in which playful double meanings and subtle allusions are commonplace. And it is a very beautiful creation of the human intellect which we can appreciate forever.

Glenn Gould Films - Report